The Oregon Symphony Announces the 2024-2025 Season

2024/25 Season Highlights

Throughout the season, the theme The Nature of Music will captivate audiences with shared moments of focus in which the Oregon Symphony explores the power of music as a unifying social force.

Oregon Symphony Music Director David Danzmayr will conduct the season opener, Richard Strauss’ An Alpine Symphony, featuring a grand and awe-inspiring performance of over 100 musicians depicting the natural landscape, beauty and challenges of an Alpine mountain.

Oregon Symphony Creative Chair Gabriel Kahane’s world premiere of Talent & Phoenix is a work that reflects on the Almeda Fire that devastated the Rogue Valley in 2020.
Principal Cello and composer Nancy Ives will perform her piece, Celilo Falls: We Were There (New Version for Orchestra).

The season culminates with Danzmayr conducting Mahler’s Third Symphony, a work that progresses from the awakening of nature to the contemplation of human existence, expressing the intersection of nature, humankind, and music.

Composer-in-Residence Andy Akiho premieres a new concerto for cellist Jeffrey Zeigler.
Contemporary composers and artists including Xavier Foley will perform his co-commissioned piece, New Double Bass Concerto No. 2.

British composer and pianist Sir Stephen Hough will perform his solo piano concerto The World of Yesterday in a program that includes Mozart's first and last symphony.
World-renowned guest artists include pianists Yefim Bronfman, Garrick Ohlsson, and Joyce Yang.

Legendary jazz pianist Makoto Ozone, will showcase his inspiring rendition of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.

A Portland favorite and only American to win the Gold Medal at the International Chopin Piano Competition, pianist Garrick Ohlsson, will perform Chopin’s First Piano Concerto in the season opener.

The Oregon Symphony announces its live concert season programming for 2024-2025 in Portland and Salem. Opening on September 21, 2024, the upcoming season embraces the theme, The Nature of Music, by exploring the powerful connection between music and nature with a focus on harnessing the power of music as a social force. The season aims to rekindle deep bonds with nature and explore how music can inspire the resolve to endure and face the challenges of our changing environment.

“We will embark on a journey that explores the interplay of music and nature, unlocking a source of inspiration,” says Oregon Symphony President and CEO, Isaac Thompson. “The upcoming season aspires to take us beyond the music to the sounds, sights, and places that uniquely speak to the cultural fabric of our shared experiences as Oregonians, helping us to reflect and even confront today’s challenges.”

Music Director David Danyzymayr Takes the Stage

Season highlights with Danzmayr include the 2024 season premiere on September 21-23, 2024. Danzmayr embraces The Nature of Music as he conducts An Alpine Symphony. In a grand and awe-inspiring orchestration, more than 100 musicians will embody The Nature of Music in a musical depiction of the natural landscape, beauty, and challenges of an Alpine mountain.

“The 2024/25 Season focuses on the connection between music, nature, and our emotions, which is part of the innate human experience and often reflects the times,” says Oregon Symphony Music Director David Danzmayr. “In our upcoming season, we will seek to tap into the relationship between music and nature to inspire joy, awe, and calm, as well as emotional and social connections.”

Danzmayr will conduct three show stopping performances of Beethoven’s works. First, on back-to-back weekends, Danzmayr will conduct Beethoven’s Emperor, featuring Beethoven's heroic piano concerto by the globally acclaimed Yefim Bronfman. The following weekend, January 18-20, 2025, Danzmayr leads the Oregon Symphony in an ode to the power of dance in Exhilarating Beethoven, in which the Oregon Symphony performs Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.

In a night graced by Bach’s Third Orchestral Suite, Danzmayr will conduct a rarely performed work, Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 2 “Lobgesang,” also known as Hymn of Praise on February 22-24, 2025.

Danzmayr again brings nature to the center stage on April 12-14, 2025 with depictions of babbling brooks, birdsong and booming thunderstorms that represent the beauty and power of the Austrian countryside in Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony. Creative Chair Gabriel Kahane considers how our local communities can unite when a crisis comes to our front doors in his work Talent & Phoenix. Through this new song cycle for vocal soloists and orchestra, Kahane asks, “How is memory remade, and community rebuilt, when the buildings that housed our past are reduced to ash?”

Closing out the season, Danzmayr will conduct Mahler’s Third Symphony. One of the longest symphonies, this work is a powerful exploration of nature’s diverse forms and its profound impact on the human experience.

How to contact us

For questions or comments please contact the Oregon Symphony at 851 SW 6th Avenue, Suite 385, Portland, OR 97204-1339, 503-228-4294.